We performed in the basement of the chiquitos for two weeks, it's an L-shaped room with low ceilings (so don't do too much jumping). There's no backstage or any real lighting which means low tech is key. We're a sketch show and the lack of lights down was difficult but we got around it by playing a song to demonstrate the end of sketches which worked extremely well. The only real problem we had with it being in a basement is when we sold out the room would get very warm and almost unbearably so at times, it may be worth seeing if there's a possibility of getting fans to cool the room down.

Our intake of people was quite variable, but we averaged around 10-15 people per performance and only had to pull one show due to a lack of an audience. The last week was much quieter, partly due to flyering fatigue and partly due to the fringe being quieter generally around this time.

Bucket-takings were mainly around £20 per show but we averaged around £30-40 a day. We could have probably done better but this was our first time at the fringe and flyering was new to us.

Chiquitos itself was lovely, we gave the staff all our silvers and coppers and this seemed to really help us get along. They were however, quite restrictive about postering because they are a chain, which meant that it was sometime unclear that it was indeed a venue. The entrance to the stair was also some way into the restaurant making it even more confusing to potential customers.

The location of Chiquito (Frederick Street) is quite a distance away from the main fringe and this sometimes meant flyering was difficult as you would catch a lot of people just going about their everyday business. It was also quite difficult to get the wee book across town of foot and so it might be worth organising somebody with a car to bring them across. We found it best to flyer on queen street and george street, it helped to do a bit of busking alongside if only to keep the flyerers spirits up.

The performers we met were nice, but it would have been good to have got a bit more group activity if only to build team moral.

We were very happy with our first run at Chiquitos, and would recommend it as a starting venue for any new show. However, the lack of tech meant that it was difficult to perform a sketch show.